Building a puzzle

I was able to find time over several nights to assemble a metal puzzle. In a Google+ posting, Linus Torvalds mentioned working on a Star Wars model, and I was curious to see what other models were available by Fascinations. I eventually ordered this:

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It sat, unopened, on my desk for a few months, but I finally tore open the packaging and started putting it together. After about 15 minutes, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do it with just fingernails, I needed a proper tool, very fine needle-nosed pliers. So, I ordered those, and waited a few days.

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Some of the tabs were very hard to place, I needed to borrow a magnifying visor to get the tabs into the slots, but things went relatively smoothly. I broke three pieces. Two of the breaks aren’t noticeable, there were enough tabs to hold everything together. The last piece broke when I was trying to remove it from the metal sheets, you can see a gap near the front of the upper cupola on the model where some of the length of that piece broke off. Here’s the final version:

Overall, it was a fun experience. Not frustrating, but it did require patience.